Here’s What Kentavious Caldwell-Pope Showed During the 2023-24 Season

Here’s What Kentavious Caldwell-Pope Showed During the 2023-24 Season

the Orlando Magic were one of the best defensive teams in the League last year they were third in defensive rating behind the Minnesota Timberwolves and Boston Celtics not many teams had as many versatile Defenders as them in 2023 24 and now with the signing of cavius Caldwell Pope they might be even better on that end next season now kcp has always been a quality Defender but last year he truly was one of the League’s best defenders it was quite a surprise to me that he didn’t make an all defensive team although In fairness it would have been hard to leave off any of the 10 guys who did make one of those two teams still he finished 17th in voting so even if there was a third team he still would not have made it and why statistically that was probably too low was because opponent shot a 200 Shot minimum League low 40.6% with him as the nearest Defender According to second spectrum that was a career best Mark for him his previous best was 41.3% in 201516 when he was playing for Detroit kcp in 2023 24 was the closest Defender to 591 shots so if you look at only the 2011 players who were the nearest Defender to at least 500 shots the top five in defensive field goal percentage were kcp OG anobi pton Watson Derek white and Trey Murphy III other notables in the top 10 were Jaden McDaniels Lou Dort and Anthony Edwards another striking stat about kcp was that he heavily contested 56% of the shots he guarded which was a career best as well and on those 335 shots per second Spectrum opponent shot 35.8% which was the second lowest Mark among qualified players only opponents against Joel embiid shot it worse with a heavy contest kcp technique tenacity determination and instincts are all on display when he’s on the job defensively what’s so impressive is that he was tasked with guarding the other team’s best players regularly throughout the season there were over 600 possessions in which he was matched up with Paul George Steph Curry Anthony Edwards Brandon Ingram and Jaylen green combined and they all shot lower field goal percentages than their season averages with kcp defending their shots the other thing that popped out to me was how good he was preventing opponents from connecting on n1s as you see from these clips he often made sure they weren’t able to overpower him on their way up kcp defensive N1 percentage was 15.5% which was a top 15 Mark among qualified players offensively he’s going to give the magic a major shooting boost Orlando was last in the league in 20232 24 in total three-pointers made and they attempted the second fewest of them kcp shot 40.6% from downtown it was the third time in the last four years he shot above 40% interesting about his shooting last year was that he was very efficient shooting from long distance off the dribble with at least one dribble before a three-point shot attempt he made 48.2% of them among the 139 players who took at least 50 of these shots that was the second best Mark only Grayson Allen ranked higher the magic as a team shot 20 99.8% from three-point distance off the dribble third worst in the league he’s also very comfortable shooting from long range when flying around an off ball screen running in transition relocating back to the three-point line or just simply sliding around the arc to find open space for a jumper in those situations in 2023 24 he shot 40.2% the 18th best Mark among the 77 players who took at least 75 of them and that’s according to to Second [Music] Spectrum the biggest thing though will be is more simplistic catching and shooting of kickout passes from the paint with poo benero and fron Vagner getting into the paint so much having someone like kcp to spray the ball out to will be beneficial for them when they collapse the defense kcp took 91 of these shots off kickouts from the paint last season and he made 41.8% of them from the 3point corners last year he shot 43.4% Orlando had the seventh worst percentage from the corners last [Music] [Music] year in 76 games kcp averaged 10.1 points 2.4 rebounds 2.4 assists and 1.3 steals shooting 46% from the field overall 40.6% from three-point range and 89.4% from the free throw line which ranked 11th among those who took at least 100 foul shots so that’ll wrap up this video If you like this kind of content please subscribe

Adding Kentavious Caldwell-Pope in free agency should make the Orlando Magic an even more stifling defensive team. #nba #kentaviouscaldwellpope #orlandomagic #magic #filmroom #nbafilmstudy

Video footage courtesy of NBAE